RICHARDSON, Texas (Oct. 27, 2003) - Electrical engineering professor Dr. Dian Zhou will take a leave of absence from The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) to help his alma mater, Fudan University in Shanghai, China, develop its fledgling microelectronics program. He will serve as dean of the Microelectronics College at Fudan, where he earned an M.S. degree in electrical engineering and a B.S. degree in physics.

While on leave, he will continue to advise his graduate students at UTD and manage his ongoing research grants and projects in UTD's Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.

Last February, Zhou won the prestigious Chang Jiang Scholar Award from the Ministry of Education of the Peoples Republic of China - believed to be a first for a Metroplex-area academic. With the award came initial funding of approximately $250,000, along with laboratory space and related personnel, to establish a microelectronics and research program at Fudan. In addition, Zhou has been charged with helping develop an institute whose responsibility it will be to promote the growth of the microelectronics industry in Shanghai, home to numerous semiconductor and information technology companies.

"I expect that the dual role I will serve over the next few years at UTD and Fudan University will lead to increased scientific and technological interactions - including various collaborations and joint programs - between the two institutions and their respective regions," Zhou said.

Fudan is one of the top universities in China. It is located in an area undergoing an economic boom, fueled in large part by a growing semiconductor industry. Recently, according to Zhou, nine new semiconductor processing lines have been built in the region, most of which are joint ventures with foreign companies.

"There is an urgent need to develop a first-class microelectronics program to help cope with and shape this economic development, and that's what I intend to do at Fudan," Zhou said.

Zhou came to UTD in 1999 from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he was an associate professor of electrical engineering. He holds a Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Zhou has won many honors for his academic research, including an Outstanding Overseas Young Investigator Award from the Chinese National Science Foundation in 2000, a National Science Foundation (U.S.) Young Investigator Award in 1994 and an IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Darlington Award in 1993.

About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor, enrolls about 13,700 students. The school's freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university's web site at www.utdallas.edu.